We had a bottle-free day today!

Yay!

Well, for us, that's big. His bottles are of a style that helps reduce colic & air ingestion (great for when he was a baby), but they contain 6 pieces that have to be separated to be washed, then put back together. The straw cups and/or sippy cups he uses have 2 - 3 pieces each... much easier to clean... MUCH LESS clutter (once we clear out the bottles) in the kitchen. We've been weaning him off, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Let's hope for more bottle-free days ahead~

Heard from the birth mother (via text) today. It's been a month & a half (?) since we've heard from her. As usual, she's curious how Mercer's doing.

We picked our first tomatoes off of the vine this week from the raised bed garden in the back yard. We are going to have gobs and gobs of tomatoes as long as all of the ones that are starting to develop continue to grow. Please email your favorite tomato recipe to us. We'll have enough tomatoes to try out all the recipes we can get our hands on!

Speaking of recipes, we had something new for dinner - a zucchini and squash torta (a traditional Mexican side-dish according to the cookbook we used) and a one-pot main dish of cabbage braised with tomatoes, potatoes, and chorzio (a spicy sausage typically made with pork, but we had a veggie chorzio). We liked it / would make it again... if anyone wants that recipe, let us know.

Our meal was 80-90% locally-grown (because we used mostly vegetables from our CSA). I may go sign up for the Local Food challenge at our Whole Foods tomorrow. Unfortunately, I just stocked up on a bunch of fruit and I know that some are local, but not all. I don't know the details of the challenge, but it would be a good thing to try and incorporate more of! Looking forward to it~